Here is a survey of 15 free webcast tutorials on Microsoft Robotics Development Studio. The Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio is a Windows-based environment for robot control and simulation. You can download Microsoft Robotics Development Studio 2008 Express Edition at no cost.
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4 Divisions of MRDS:
* CCR (Concurrency and Coordination Runtime) – makes asynchronous programming simple. The CCR makes it simple to write up programs to handle asynchronous input from multiple robotics sensors and output to motors and actuators. With the use of CCR, we don’t need to do any manual threads management. This may be particularly good in handling concurrency and partial failure. CCR has a failure handling mechanism called Causalities. This is in essence a generalization of Try / Catch for multiple threads. But this is for many machines and processes working in synchronous fashion. This is the base of Robotics architecture by Microsoft. You can even use this component for the applications running on a PC instead of a robot. CCR is available in the form of a dynamic link library that may be used by any .net language.
* DSS (Decentralized Software Services) Is the services architecture, and it is a companion to CCR. This is based on Service Oriented Architecture. This enables one to write applications which can be distributed and modular. This makes it possible for you to execute your code in the processing work horses and use anywhere in the distributed environment. The DSS makes it easy to access, and respond to, a robot’s state via a Web browser or Windows-based application. This provides for real-time monitoring of robotics sensors and real-time response to motors and actuators.
* VPL (Microsoft Visual Programming Language) Is a visual programming tool that is used for creating and debugging robot applications, web-based and windows-based interfaces.
* VSE (Visual Simulation Environment) Allows one to simulate the behavior of robots in a virtual world using NVIDIA PhysX technology (3D engine) that includes advanced physics.
The Runtime environment Has two main parts: the CCR and the DSS. The runtime is based on a lightweight REST-oriented services model. Making it REST based has made the services and applications to be independent of each other. They may be on the same machine or distributed across different machines connected through any method. When we say REST based, This implies that the resources should be available by query strings. These services are available as resources to the other services, applications or User Interfaces. This is, in reality, how Microsoft is able to promise low coupling between services. The Runtime supports from 8-bit to 32-bit robots. These robots may range from Toy Robots to Industrial Robots.
Microsoft VPL Allows anyone to write up and debugrobotics programs . Just drag and drop blocks that represent services, and connect them. It is also possible to take a collection of connected blocks and reuse them as a single block elsewhere in the program. VPL follows the Observer Pattern. This implies that it is not based on Control flow but on data flow which allows some program elements to get executed when some data arrives. VPL provides a model-driven approach to develop and orchestrate services.
Easily Simulate Robotics applications using realistic 3D simulated models. Since testing with real robots is often expensive, it saves money to start out in a simulated environment first and then move to real robots once the concepts have been proven to work. Microsoft Visual Simulation Environment (VSE) is based on Microsofts XNA Framework and the rendering engine uses AGEIA PhysX Technology from AGEIA Technologies Inc.. AGEIA Technologies Inc. Is a pioneer in hardware-accelerated physics, enabling real-world physics simulation for robot models. PhysX simulations can also be accelerated using AGEIA hardware. These simulations may be recorded and saved as XML files and played back over and over again.
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Six Main Highlights of MRDS:
* Reuse Modular Services Using a Composable model
Develop high-level functions using simple components, providing for reuse of code modules as well as better reliability and replaceability. For example, a lower-level sensor service may be integrated into a navigation service.
* Scalable and Extensible Platform
The RDS programming model can be applied to a variety of robot hardware platforms, enabling users to transfer their skills across multiple platforms. The programming interfaces may be used to develop applications on single or multi-core processors.
* Easily extend Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio Functionality
Third parties can extend the functionality of RDS by providing additional libraries and services. Hardware or software vendors can make their products easily compatible with RDS.
* Supports both remotely connected (PC-based) and robot-based (autonomous) application scenarios
Remotely connected scenarios enable communication from a PC to the robot through a serial port, Bluetooth®, 802.11 (WiFi), or RF modem. Programs can also execute natively on PC-based robots running one of the Microsoft Windows operating systems, enabling fully autonomous operation.
* Develop using a broad choice of programming languages
MRDS allows you to access the runtime services using the following programming languages: C# and Visual Basic .NET, JScript, and IronPython
* Microsoft Robotics Developer Studio allows one to use numerous packages to add other services to the suite.
Those other services include:
O Soccer Simulation
O Sumo Competition by Microsoft
O a community-developed Maze Simulator which is a program to create worlds with walls that can be explored by a virtual robot
Sample Applications:
* Princeton University’s DARPA Urban Grand Challenge autonomous car entry was programmed completely with MRDS.
* In 2008 Microsoft launched a simulated robotics competition named RoboChamps using MRDS, 4 challenges were available : maze, sumo, urban, and mars rover. The simulated environment and robots used by the competition were created by SimplySim and the competition was sponsored by KIA Motors.
Supported Robots:
* Aldebaran Robotics
* CoroWare
* Lego Mindstorms NXT
* KUKA Robotics
* Robosoft’s robots
* Segway
* RoboticsConnection
* RoombaDevTools by RoboDynamics
* WowWeeRoboSapien via the USB-UIRT device
* e-nuvo WALK